1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for updating a basic input/output system (‘BIOS’) boot block security module in a plurality of compute nodes of a multinode computer.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
In typical multinode systems a BIOS boot block of code may be updated in each node upon power-on of each node. Each of the nodes may complete the update asynchronously such that one node may complete the update first. Upon such a first completion of the update in a node, the boot block causes the node to reset. Such a reset typically causes a reset signal to be sent to other nodes in the multinode system causing those nodes to reset also, and in some cases, reset before completing the BIOS boot block update. Such a failed update may cause many errors in operation including complete node failure.